


S.R.B.

by mcshrug



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Boarding School AU, M/M, Suckers, but the gallaghers still are not, in which the milkovitches are filthy stinkin' rich
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-01-25 12:49:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1649183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcshrug/pseuds/mcshrug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brookings Boarding School, est. 1961. The best education in the country for young men who can cough up the cash and the shittiest one for young men who can't; or, the story of Mickey Milkovitch and Ian Gallagher and how much Mickey wants to fuck the poor scholarship kid up except minus the up part, maybe. Life's kind of shitty, sometimes, ain't it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i'd like to dedicate this story to the spot one minute and twenty one seconds into the song life of the party by wallpaper. thank you.

            The first time Mickey sees the new kid is when he stumbles in five minutes late to a lecture, hair dripping wet and blazer buttoned wrong and tie half-crumpled around his throat. His textbook, shiny and uncracked, is clutched to his chest, and his voice cracks a little when he chokes out a “sorry I’m late, I couldn’t, uh, find the right building,” as the professor goes silent and the whole room turns around to face him, standing framed in the doorway to the room with sunlight from the courtyard spilling a golden halo around his orange-red hair.

            Mickey wonders if the carpet matches the drapes. Johnny Maldroves, sprawled in the seat next to him, sends a glance his way. “Guy’s got muscles,” he says.

            Mickey leers a little, just to make Maldroves uncomfortable, and then says, “So do I, fuckface.”

            “That’s quite understandable,” the professor is saying in a tone that says it’s very much not. “I assume you’re Ian Gallagher?”

            “Uh, yessir, that’s me.” Jesus, he’s the _yessir_ type. He’ll be unconscious at the pit of a gutter by nine PM tonight even _if_ Mickey doesn’t catch him after class.

            “The student here on scholarship?”

            Gallagher closes his eyes briefly. The sound of his proverbial coffin being firmly nailed shut echoes around the silent lecture hall. A little more hesitantly: “Yes, sir.”

            “Then be sure to make we don’t have a reason to actually make you shell out the bucks you should be paying just like everybody else, Mr. Gallagher. Take a seat.”

            There’s no seat at the back of the class, so Gallagher has to trudge all the way down the center aisle to take one of the empty rows at the front. Two guys stick out their feet into the aisles, but he neatly steps around them, dodges a spitball spun towards the side of his neck. Plunks himself down in the front row and places his textbooks down on the table with hands that barely shake.

            Mickey cracks his neck and eyes the pale orange glow of his hair under the lights. He loves new kids.

           

            The first time Mickey _meets_ the new kid is with Ian Gallagher pinned up against a brick wall, one hand around his throat and the other a fist sunk into his gut. His head hits the mortar with a thick _crack_ and his textbooks hit the ground with a fluttering thud, and Mickey gets all up in his face, close enough to see his blue eyes widen, his stuttering pupils blow wide.

            “Hello, new kid,” he grins into his face, bares his teeth and snaps them an inch away from the tip of Gallagher’s pert little nose. “I heard you hadn’t been properly welcomed to Brookings yet.”

            There’s a hoarse collection of laughs from the group arced around him, boys letting out manly chuckles that don’t quite reach their eyes. Mickey’s stupid in a lot of ways but he’s not stupid in this one; most of them don’t actually enjoy this ritual, but they’re too smart, or too cowardly, to pretend they’re above it. So he has to rile ‘em up. Every time, has to give ‘em something to come back for.

            And Jesus, is Ian Gallagher pinned to a wall something to come back for. He refuses to show fear, bares his teeth right back at Mickey and says, “I dunno, _pal,_ got the welcome brochure at the information center just like the lady told me. I think I’m good.”

            Mickey can’t help the feral grin that twists across his face. “I dunno, new kid. There’re some things that the fuckin’ _brochure_ just _can’t fuckin’ express._ Some, sorta, you feel me. Some kinda _rituals,_ you feel me?” He knuckles his way a little deeper into Gallagher’s gut, into the soft space just behind his ribs, nudges at his kidneys a little until Gallagher lets out a little grunt of pain from behind his tight-clenched teeth. “A welcoming party for the newcomers.”

            “A welcoming party,” repeats Gallagher, a little breathy. His face is slowly turning purple.

            “That’s right, new guy. A little celebration, all about you! We’re holding it out at the lake, ten PM tonight. You think you’ll be able to make it?”

            “I-“ Mickey tightens one hand around his throat and the other around his bottom rib. Gallagher’s next sentence comes out as a wheeze. “I think I might be free, yeah.”

            “Perfect.” Mickey releases him, lets him slump back against the wall, hands going to clutch at his ribs. “Don’t be late, new guy. Can’t start the party without _you_ there.”

            He walks to his next class with a bounce in his step. There’s nothing like a little light hazing to get a day started _right_.

 

             Iggy whines like a little bitch when Mickey tells him he needs him out by the lake tonight.

            “ _Tonight,_ Mick?” he groans. They’re sitting out on the quad, smoking and letting the sun and the ants have their cafeteria lunches. “Jesus, I’d _finally_ gotten the tennis chick from St. Mary’s to go out with me. _Jesus.”_

“So fuckin’ _cancel,_ man.” Mickey has never really understood the appeal of the St. Mary’s girls. Sure, they’re good as hell for your rep, but their lipstick tastes like pewter and wax and their nails are sharp when they try to hold your hand, and- and alright, this is a story that absolutely no one can ever find out about, _ever,_ but the last time Mickey went out with a St. Mary’s girl it went like:

            They’re in the back of her car, and Mickey’s kind of cramped because no one in St. Mary’s has a decent fucking car, and she’s kissing at his neck and it’s kind of wet and he’s looking up at the ceiling of the car and the pattern is kind of like, corrugated, and it reminds him of tortilla chips, and he’s actually kind of hungry because he didn’t eat much at dinner because she brought him to some kind of piece of shit four star restaurant that serves you like one dollop of mashed fish and calls it gourmet, and his stomach rumbles and he says, absently, “damn, I could really go for some nachos right now.”

            She detaches from his neck with a sound like a plunger being yanked out of a shitty freshman dorm toilet. “What the hell?”

            “Um.”

            “You’re thinking about _nachos_ right now?”

            Whatever. It ended badly. Ended up stranded, had to call his dorm, got detention, had that goddamn hickey for the next _week,_ whatever. St. Mary’s girls are overrated, is the point.

            Back to Ian Gallagher and the welcoming party. “Play hard to get it. She’ll fuckin’ love it.”

            Iggy takes a long drag on his cigarette. “Mickey,” he says, “I don’t care about you as much as I care about getting my dick wet, so. The answer’s no.”

             “Fucking asshole.”

            “No,” says Iggy, “fucking _pussy,_ I save _that_ for at least the second date,” and then he laughs for like five minutes until Mickey shoves his cigarette down his throat and he chokes for a while.

            Fucking asshole.

 

            Mandy comes over after school, lets herself into his dorm room while he’s still in his last class because, out of all the St. Mary’s girls he hates, he hates her the most. By the time he lets himself in, she’s on his bed, making out with his roommate.

            “Jesus, Mandy,” he says, kicking the door shut.

They detach with a soft sucking noise; he looks utterly dazed, and she wipes at her mouth before looking up at him with a sharp grin. “Mick. I came over to catch up!”

            “Clearly.” He unthreads his tie from his shirt, uses it to whip his roommate across the head before shrugging off his blazer. “Off my pillow, asshole. General rule of rooming with me: where my face goes, your ass does _not.”_

He disentangles himself from Mandy and scuttles over to his own bed like he can’t believe his own luck. The look of shock on his face and the huge boner tenting his pants mean that he probably isn’t one of Mandy’s regular flings; she doesn’t really go for guys she can bowl over so easily, doesn’t like the ones that’ll bend over backwards or get hard for her too easy. She probably just got bored waiting for Mickey to come back from class.

            Fucking St. Mary’s girls.

            “So.” She rearranges her shirt, primly redoes the top few buttons. “What’s new in your life, Mick?”

            “What the fuck do you want, Mandy.”

            She rolls her eyes, shakes out her hair. “What, I can’t come visit my favorite brother?”

            “Is it money? There’s no way you spent your Easter dough already, you piece of shit.”

            “It’s not _money,_ Mickey.” Mandy gives an exaggerated sigh. “ _Fine,_ if you won’t tell me what’s going on in your life, I’ll tell you what’s going on in _mine._ I saw a _smokin’_ hot new kid driving around yesterday and rumor is he’s a smokin’ hot new _Brookings student.”_

Jesus Christ. “He’s dead.”

            “Physically or metaphorically?”

            “Physically or- Jesus Christ, Mandy. He’s going to be dead. He’s a dead man.” He sighs. “We’re hazing him later tonight.”

            Mandy pouts. “ _Please_ be gentle with him, Mickey, c’mon. He’s the freshest fresh meat you’ve gotten in ages.”

            Mickey decides that he’s going to be even harder on Gallagher than he usually is on the new kids. Maybe instead of the lake treatment for an hour or two, he’ll get the whole goddamned night. “Aw, fuck off, Mandy. Go sleep with some other dude.”

            “Maybe I will,” says Mandy magnanimously. “Jake, c’mon over here.”

            Mickey’s roommate- _Jake,_ his name is _Jake,_ Mickey should really write that down or something- almost trips over his own feet in his rush to get to her. Mickey rolls his eyes and leaves them to it. He has some rope and duct tape to locate, anyway.

           

            The lake is charcoal gray under the feeble glow of their flashlights. In the daylight, the lake’s all fishies and floaties and too-small Speedos, but in the dark it’s tempting to imagine it as something more sinister. It’s a lot easier to picture water-logged corpses pressing bloated kisses against trailing fingers when every squirrel rustling dead leaves in the woods sounds like a tip-toeing masked man with an axe clutched in skeletal fingers.

            It’s perfect. Mickey smiles into the dark. He’s a great goddamned bully, he really is.

            “What time’s it?”

            “Still quarter til, Collins,” says Mickey. “Now shut the fuck up before I shove your flashlight up your ass.”

            Collins shuts the fuck up.

            There are twelve of them, shuffling around in the woods on the eastern edge of the lake; all overworked juniors, faces shadowy in the dim light, mouths wet with pilfered wine and eyes narrow with excitement. It’s not every day that they get to break the monotony of the class-detention-homework-sleep day-to-day schedule.

            It’s on the second head count that Mickey realizes that the twelve of them and the one of him make this a perfect Biblical metaphor. He wonders if Jesus ever got hazed.

            Smith hefts the rope up more securely around his shoulders. “Y’think he’s gonna chicken out, boss?”

            “Nah.” Gallagher, held up by the throat against the walls, hadn’t had the eyes of a guy who’d run from a meeting like this. Running would only put it off, anyway, and if he’s a scholarship kid he’s not gonna have the option of avoiding them forever. He’s gotta be good. Gotta be a good fuckin’ kid. “He’ll come.”

            And that’s when Collins goes down, just topples face-first into the brush without so much as a grunt.

            “What the fuck,” says Mickey, flat.

            They all freeze, some guys mid-step, one with half a hand around a toad he was about to pick up, staring at Collins, buried in the foliage with the coil of rope slipping down his shoulders.

            Then he slowly raises himself up on his elbows, looking stunned, and they all see a huge gob of blue paint smacked right between his eyebrows, slowly dripping down the bridge of his nose.

            “What the _fuck,”_ says Mickey, and that’s when something hits him in the gut, hard enough that he doubles over with a grunt, breath punched out of him. There’s a series of pops, a couple of boys grunt, and then one of them yells and Mickey staggers upright just in time to see them start to scatter, Flanagan wheeling backwards into the woods and Jerry sprinting past him onto the shore.

            When Mickey looks down at his aching gut, there’s a splash of yellow paint dripping down the pale orange of his t-shirt, and when he looks up, Ian Gallagher is standing at the treeline, a paintball gun in his hand.

            “You piece of _shit,”_ breathes Mickey. It comes out a little more admiring than he would have liked it to.

            Gallagher cocks the gun his way. He’s still in his uniform, like he didn’t even bother to change out once classes are over, but his jacket is rumpled and his tie is loosening, sinking down so that the knot dangles below his chest. His muscles are bulging against the white undershirt. His face is pale in the moonlight, his soft lips pressed tight. “Just wanted to add a little excitement to your _welcoming party,”_ he says, and then he yanks the trigger tight and _doesn’t let go._

            Mickey lunges for him, and fuck, _fuck,_ wouldn’t you have known it? Paintballs hurt like _hell_ from close-range, Jesus Christ, and it’s about around the time that the twelfth shot cracks his nose open that Mickey squints open his orange-pink smeared eyes to see that Gallagher is gone, his footsteps just crashes in the distant forest.

            Mickey clutches his face and swears, every _fuck_ tasting like green. Oh, Ian Gallagher is a _dead fucking man._

           

            Mickey can’t scrub the paint out of his hair and eyelashes in time for the first class the next day, got paint all over his pillowcase, can’t sleep on his front because there’s a splint taking up half his face, punches his roommate when the clueless fucker asks why his lips are the color purple. He’s so mad he’s practically spitting by the time he gets to his first lecture, slams his textbooks down on the desk so hard he cracks the cover of Econ 2.

            “Hey, Milkovitch,” says Kenny Crollenburg, twisting around to smirk at him from the row ahead. He’s balding prematurely, but he combs his thin brown hair over the crown of his pale head and pretends like he’s not taking over his dear old dad already when he’s barely a junior. “Heard your _party_ went well last night.”

            Mickey would bare his teeth at him, but fuck, his incisors are fucking _magenta._ “If you’re not brave enough to haze, Kenny, don’t fuckin’ pretend like you _understand_ it.”

            “Not hard to understand that a _freshman_ got the better of ya, Milkovitch.”

            _Got the better of him._ Who even fucking brings a _paintball gun_ with him to _boarding school?_ It’s not like Mickey could’ve fucking fired back. Jesus Christ. It was an act of cowardice and nothing more.

            Yeah, Gallagher’s gonna die. Painfully. And Mickey’s gonna fuckin’ record it, alright, and he’s gonna post it on fuckin’ Vine and it’s gonna get a thousand fuckin’ hits and Gallagher’s momma’s gonna fuckin’ _cry._

That’s what’s gonna fuckin’ happen. Fuck.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So they beat Gallagher up.
> 
> It's not that great. Goddammit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [soft beatboxing overlaid by the sound of pained cries]

            Jack Todd is a sniveling, pasty lump of a kid, a slump of underbaked dough cooking slowly under the fluorescent lights, his eyes two crumpled black raisins in his fat-rolled face. He looks dully up at Mickey when Mickey corners him by the salad bar. There’s a plate clutched in his fist with a small mountain of cucumber slices on it, swimming in an ocean of watery Ranch dressing.

            “That’s a hell of a lot of cucumber,” says Mickey, conversationally.

            Todd blinks up at him. His soft pink lips flutter for a moment before he mumbles, “’M on a diet.”

            “It’s not working,” Mickey tells him. “Alright, on to the subject at hand.”

            Todd looks regretfully over Mickey’s shoulder, towards the tables, towards freedom. Mickey moves to block his view. “Heard you got a new roommate last week, huh, Todd?”

            It takes Todd a moment to answer. “Um. Yeah.” A cucumber slides slickly off the pile, plops into the Ranch. Goes swimming by on a river of fat and buttermilk. “Yeah, new roommate.”

            “So, Todd. What the _hell_ is he like?”

            “Um.” Todd watches the cucumber float for a moment. “I dunno.”

            “He smart?”

            “I dunno.”

            “You’re killin’ me, Todd. Does he do his schoolwork?”

            “I dunno.”

            “ _Todd._ You’re _killin’_ me.” Mickey takes Todd by the elbow, the polyester of the uniform thick beneath his fingers, and squeezes. “You know, Todd, to make up for this lack of intelligence, you’re gonna have to do me a favor.”

            Todd looks vaguely terrified.

            “Put down the cucumber.”

            Todd looks abjectly terrified. “I was gonna eat that.”

            “Put down the cucumber, Todd, we’re gonna take a walk.”

 

            Todd lives in the freshman dorm. It’s the shitty one, the one nearest the parking lot, where the AC is always on the fritz and everyone lives in doubles and the graffiti scrawled on the bathroom walls is less existential than the graffiti in the senior dorms.

            He lives on the first floor, trudges slowly down the hallway while Mickey trails behind, careful not to touch anything. The freshman dorm is vaguely grimy on every surface, and Mickey is starting to feel like he’s much, much too rich for this.

            Todd stops in front a door that has his name tacked up on it in felt letters. “This is my room,” he says, somewhat unnecessarily.

            “You don’t say.”

            “No, really. It is.”

            Mickey doesn’t know why he puts up with half the shit he puts up with. He really doesn’t.

            Todd’s room is neat. The two beds are pushed against opposite walls with a cleanstrip of cherry oak stretching down between them; there aren’t even any gray-washed socks or empty beer cans lying around. Over the left bed, which Mickey is going to assume is Todd’s because of the fact that the bedspread has his name embroidered on it in puke-green thread, hangs a drooping poster for a US soccer player with 2006 emblazoned in yellow in the bottom left corner. Over the right bed, you can’t even see the wall. It’s just _pictures._ Photograph upon photograph tacked the wall, forming messy squares right up to the edge of the windowsill.

            Mickey walks over, leans over to squint at them. Sure enough, Gallagher’s smiling moon of a fuck face is beaming out at him from most of the photographs. Gallagher punching a small boy, Gallagher getting punched by a larger boy. Gallagher giving a little girl a noogie, Gallagher holding a baby, Gallagher holding a diploma, Gallagher eight years old and grinning gap-toothed through a weedy curtain of carrot-orange locks, Gallagher with a girl, Gallagher with a boy. Gallagher with a fucking _memory wall_ on his dorm room wall like he thinks that he’s got to _remember_ these people or some shit, like he thinks he’s gonna _miss_ them. Fucking sentimental bastard; Mickey is going to rip him apart.

            None of the pictures are of Gallagher with adults; none of the people gripping him so tightly have that distinctive mop of orange-red. Fucking sentimental _bastard,_ indeed.

            “I’m taking these,” says Mickey, mostly to himself.

            “What?” wheezes Todd from behind. Mickey’d forgotten he was there, but now he’s lumbering uncomfortably close, breath warm and moist on the back of Mickey’s neck. “You’re takin’ _what?”_

“Dude, I’m fuckin’ stealin’ some of Gallagher’s shit, you got somethin’ to say about it?”

            Todd decides that he doesn’t.

            Mickey roots around for a minute- shuffles hands through Gallagher’s bedspread, ruffles through the bedside table drawer- before he finds the black shoebox under the bed. Perfect.

            He’s hoping for a stash of money, a diary, a precious keepsake; something that would bother the _hell_ out of Gallagher if it were to mysteriously go missing. What he gets is so, _so_ much better than that.

            “Holy fuckin’ Christ,” says Mickey.

            “What?” pipes up Todd from where he’s slouched on his bed.

            Mickey stuffs his pockets full and kicks the shoebox back under the bed. “Mind your own business, Todd,” he tells him, and then gets the hell out of the freshman dorms with his heart bumping quietly against his clavicle.

            Holy fuckin’ _Christ._

The fire in the lobby of the common room is rustling quietly when he walks past; the silver box elevator takes too long waiting on the fourth floor so he rolls his eyes, punches the doors twice, and then takes the stairwell up instead.

            It’s three flights up. With every step, he can feel Ian Gallagher’s eight inch yellow silicone dildo bumping against his thigh through his inside jacket pocket.

            Holy fuckin’-

 

            Summer is in its death throes, and the nights are still warm but the leaves are starting to brown and curl up in a way that looks an awful lot like admitting defeat. Mickey hates fall, hates fall for- a lot of reasons, okay, but it’s easiest to say this one: trees are ugly as fuck when they get all dead-looking and shit. Fuck autumn.

            Mickey rolls a joint on top of his math textbook and then leans back against the soft grass of the quad, sucks in a mouthful and stares up at the sky. It’s soft and blue and makes him think of blankets and being mothered and falling asleep. Fuck, he’s getting weak.

            “Yo, Milkovich,” says Jerry from his left side. He has a stats textbook spread open in his lap, but he’s deep in an iPhone game that involves zombies and the volume buttons. “My sister’s been askin’ for ya.”

            Collins whistles; Smith drops a wink. Mickey says, “Mmm.” The joint is sour in his mouth.

            “Yeah, man. Apparently you made _quite_ the impression.”

            “Didja eat her out?” Collins cracks his knuckles loudly, like that somehow contributes to his pussy-eating skills, and then leans forward, moistening his lips. “That’s what always gets ‘em runnin’ back. Any guy will dick ‘em but it takes a _special_ one to get his face all up in there, ya know?”

            “Boys,” says Mickey, around a belch of marijuana smoke, “a true gentlemen doesn’t kiss and tell.”

            Collins catcalls some more, but the others are already bored of it. “Well, I dunno if you’re gonna see much more of _that_ action,” says Umhau. “That splint might hurt a little when you get all nice and cozy down there, won’t it?”

            Mickey smiles, sucks down another mouthful, and then dabs the lit end of the joint against Umhau’s bare ankle.

            “Ow, Jesus _fuck!”_

Mickey takes the joint back and relights it. “Don’t worry,” he says, and taps one pinky against the plastic taped onto his quietly aching nose. “He’ll be wearin’ more gauze than me by the end of this.”

            The boys perk up, scoot a bit closer on the grass. Bloodthirty bastards, all of ‘em. “You gotta plan yet, boss?” chirps Smith.

            Mickey leans back. “So here’s the fuckin’ thing. Here’s the _fuckin’_ thing, right? Gallagher’s not untouchable. He’s not superhuman. He got the jump on us _once,_ man. Once. We can take him. It doesn’t take no fancy planning or shit.”

            The boys watch him, black eyes beady in their skulls. They smell blood. They want a taste. Fuckin’ hammerhead sharks in tweed and bowties, they are.

            “So,” says Mickey, “we’ll jump him. We’ll give him a little worse than a splint or two. And then we’ll make his life _hell.”_

The joint never sweetened up. Mickey’s gonna have to have a talk with the Brookings dealer.

 

            So they beat Gallagher up.

            It’s not that great. Goddammit.

 

            “Habla,” says the professor.

            “Habla,” echoes the class.

            “Corre.”

            “Corre.” Rain drums steadily against the windows. Informal commands blur together with the droplets rolling down the glass. Mickey braces his chin in his hand and thinks about nothing.

            “ _Sharp_ c, sharp c, do _not_ roll the Rs, again. Corre.”

            “Corre.” Gallagher’s seat is empty across the room.

            Alright, so maybe Mickey’s thinking of something.

           

            Gallagher’s out of class for four days. It’s the second week of school.

            It doesn’t make that big a splash; most people had seen this coming, had known he was marked and already decided against getting attached even before Mickey got him hospitalized. He stood up to the bullies and so he was destined to get smacked back down again. Social hierarchies existed because they could be defended, not because they were somehow easily usurped.

            Not that Gallagher had gone down easy. He’d actually knocked Smith clean out, foot to the temple and bam he was dead and out, no exaggeration. Gallagher’s wiry but he’s fierce. He knows ghetto fighting that a lot of these rich prisses don’t understand. The kind of guy who was taught to punch with his thumb tucked inside his fist so that it doesn’t get crushed isn’t going to be ready to defend against an attack that involves fingernails in your soft palate.

            But fuck, they had him up against a wall, pinned and trapped and they were far enough away that no one was going to intervene, and their fists were out and Mickey’s sleeves were up and it was so, so clear that Gallagher was done for, that the night by the lake had come to its inevitable conclusion.

            And Gallagher had squared up his soldiers and hit first. One against nine and he’d thrown the first punch.

            Dammit, Mickey has a boner again.

 

            Mickey’s getting oatmeal Friday morning when a voice behind him says, “Do they put cinnamon sugar in it?”

            Mickey glances to the side to see Gallagher, standing there with a silver bowl and a quirk to his swollen mouth. His right arm, neatly bound in a blue sling strapped to his chest, bumps lightly against the counter when he leans forward to inspect the dish.

            “What,” he says. He feels a little dazed. He’s never been close to Gallagher in a situation where he wasn’t trying to bruise him, and it’s almost dreamlike to see his face up so close, to see the way his lips part when he breathes and how his eyelashes move when he blinks.

            “Cinnamon sugar,” says Gallagher. His left eye is purpling something awful, and his upper lip looks like he pressed it to a wasp and kissed it goodnight. “Can’t stand oatmeal without a little hint of sweetness, you know?”

            “What the fuck do you want,” says Mickey, flat. His ladleful plops into his bowl with a sound like a soft animal getting stepped on.

            “Can’t a guy make some friendly conversation?”

            Mickey snorts. “What, you wanna be my _friend_ now?”

            “Oh, absolutely not,” says Gallagher cheerfully. One of his bottom teeth is a little chipped. “I think you’re scum.”

            Mickey’s eyebrows arch. “Oh, is that it, trailer trash?”

            “Ooh, clever dig,” says Gallagher, “call out the scholarship kid on his lack of money, real original. Don’t think you can intimidate me anyway, Mickey, I know where the Milkovich money comes from.”

            Mickey smiles. He smiles so hard he can feel blood vessels pop behind his lips. He wants to rip Gallagher’s smiling face off his skull. “I’m impressed the rumor mill even let you in the loop.”

            “Oh, no, I didn’t hear it as a rumor,” says Gallagher. “My brother, he uh, knew Terry. _Before.”_

Mickey smiles harder. His back teeth grind together so hard that he can feel the ache resonate through his jaw. “You fucking coward,” he says through his teeth, “you _absolute_ fucking coward. You do this in the _breakfast line?”_

“What,” says Gallagher, “you afraid to be a bully in public? Is that kinda a closet thing?”

            He’s dead. He’s dead, he’s a dead man, Ian Gallagher is a dead man ten times over. “Is there any particular reason,” says Mickey, slamming a banana onto his tray, “that you decided to _test_ just what my boundaries are towards public violence?”

            “I just wanted to let you know,” says Gallagher, “that they might have confiscated my gun, but I do have other weapons.”

            Mickey laughs. “You tryin’ to blackmail me?”

            Gallagher smiles. “You just now pickin’ up on that?”

            “Oh, believe me, Gallagher,” says Mickey, “if it comes to _that_ I have some weapons of my own.” He picks up the banana, weighs it carefully in his palm. “So if I were you-“ he makes a loose circle of his thumb and pointer finger, fits them at the top of the banana, slowly, slowly drags his hand down and back up again. “I’d be careful just how many threats I make.”

            Ian watches his fingers for a moment before his eyes snap up to Mickey’s face. He’s not smiling anymore.

            Victory is _so_ much fucking sweeter than fucking _cinnamon sugar._

Mickey fondles the banana for a moment more. “I really love the color,” he says to the fruit. “Yellow, you know. It just really _sets the mood.”_

When he looks back up, Gallagher’s mouth is a thin line.

            Mickey laughs delightedly and flips him off with both hands before dropping the banana back to his tray. “Catch ya later, _Ian.”_

The cashier glares at him balefully when he sets his tray down.

            “What?” he snaps.

            She shakes her head. Her nametag swings sadly on her sagging B-cups. “You private school kids,” she says, “I have to stand here all day and watch you _jack off fruit.”_

All in all, it’s a shining moment for Mickey Milkovich.

 

            Mickey’s roommate sneaks out that night to go fuck Mandy.

            “Hey,” he asks Mickey, one foot already out the window, “is it alright with you if I fuck your sister?”

            “No,” says Mickey.

            Roommate shrugs and disappears. When a guy has his sights set on getting into his sister’s pants, there’s not really much Mickey can do. It’s alright; if he makes her cry she’ll let him know and Mickey’ll make him disappear.

            He’s a good brother.

            So anyway, Roommate leaves to go fondle Mandy in a Burger King Drive-thru or whatever, and Mickey hems and haws for a bit. He putters around the room. He opens textbooks and then closes them again. He lights a textbook on fire, regrets it, and puts it back out again. He stacks his textbooks neatly and then knocks them all to the floor.

            He reaches into his pillowcase to pull out Ian Gallagher’s dildo.

            It’s not too monstrous looking, slim and curved with a worn out suction cup attached to the bottom. Further inspection (for science, okay? _Research)_ reveals that it’s exactly six and a half inches long. Mandy has a dress that’s the exact same shade of yellow.

            It’s clearly been cleaned, washed neatly with soap and hot water. When Mickey presses a fingertip to the head he can feel a spongy give, like it’s the head of a real dick, oh fuck, oh fuck. His blood is running hot in the veins of his trembling wrists, spreading down his inner thighs.

            This has been inside Gallagher’s body.

            Jesus Christ.

            If he fucks himself on it, that’s like- that’s second degree fucking, at least, right? Like, if it fucked Gallagher and then it fucked him that’s just a degree removed from actually fucking.

            Of course, by that logic, half the boys in the school have slept together through Mandy. Mickey fingers the dildo a little, feels the give of the plastic under his fingers. Third degree, then. Maybe third degree.

            It’s a Friday night, and Mickey’s sitting alone in his room with the window half-shut and the breeze on the back of his neck and a dildo resting against the fat hard-on pushing against the seam of his jeans.

            Christ.

 

            Mickey’s late to the pickup soccer game that night.

            “What the hell, man,” says Simms, coming close enough to disentangle the ball from net. “I’m not sayin’ you’re usually Cristiano fuckin’ Ronaldo, but you usually save a _few_ more goals than _none.”_

Mickey punches the air aimlessly. “Ronaldo isn’t even a goalie, douchewad.”

            “Yes,” says Simms, “because _that_ was the point.”

            So Mickey isn’t on his best game tonight. Ian Gallagher likes it up the _ass._

Mandy calls him at 3 AM.

            “Mandy,” says Mickey, scowling, shoving his cigarette between his teeth, “it’s 3 AM.”

            “It’s _Friday night,_ grandpa,” says Mandy.

            “Not anymore it’s not.”

            “What the fuck ever. Guess who I’m with!”

            “My roommate.”

            “Do you even know his name? Whatever. Wrong. Guess again.”

            Mickey frowns into his open window. “He said he was going to spend the night with you.”

            “Yeah. I ditched him. He was boring. Guess _who!”_

Mickey takes a long drag on his cigarette and says nothing.

            “Fine, you _lameass-_ here, here-“ there’s scuffling, and then Ian fucking Gallagher’s voice says, “What? Who’m I supposed to say hi to?” A pause. “Hello?”

            Mickey hangs up.

            And then he fucks himself on Ian Gallagher’s fucking dildo. Just to _spite_ him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! your author says thank you for reading, if you read. your author also apologizes. she's not sure what she's apologizing for but it's probably her attempt at an AU. things are shaky here in Characterization Land but your author would like you to know she tries very hard and loves you for trying as well.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If a picture could be used to summarize this chapter it would be a blueberry yogurt parfait, except the yogurt is jizz.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for everyone who's ever said anything to me about this, i don't deserve you. here, have some yogurt
> 
> minor sexual content warning in end notes, please read if you need to!!

       Smith leans over mid-trig lecture to hiss in Mickey’s ear. “Didja see the BMO list they posted for today?”

       “No,” says Mickey. Smith’s breath smells like tobacco and Cheez-its.

       “You’re on it,” says Smith, barely bothering to hide his delight.

       “Jesus,” groans Mickey. “A-fucking-gain.”

       “Fuck you, man,” says Smith, and giggles until the professor makes him come up to the front and demonstrate a proof as punishment.

 

       There’s a whole shitload of things Mickey hates about this hellhole of a rich kid’s playground, but at the top of the list would probably be the Mandatory Bi-Monthly Outing. Of all the Mandatory school policies, this is for some reason the only one the administration actually enforces. Rich people don’t use brute force, but they can assign summer school.

       And so thus the Mandatory nature of the Mandatory Bi-Monthly Outing, in which the spoiled brats of Brookings Prep venture out into the world two weekends a month to brush arms with the working class, to frolic in meadows and walk farmer’s markets and pet undernourished cats and pick fruit so that when they send brochures home to prospective student they can say with impunity that their education provides students with a well-rounded view of the world.

       It’s absolute bullshit, is what it is.

       “This is too much,” says Mickey.

       “Put out the goddamned cigarette, Milkovich, you’re not in the South side anymore,” says Tony, and plucks the cig out from between Mickey’s lips. Mickey fucking hates Tony. He’s some failed security guard who wasn’t tough enough for the big game and ended up by accident at this cushy job chaperoning charter buses to and from the richest boarding school this side of the Canadian border, and he thinks he’s big and tough because he has a nightstick in his back pocket, like any kid couldn’t do worse with a fuckin’ brick. “Now get on the fuckin’ bus.”

       “What the hell is this assigned seating bullshit? Do you know how much I fuckin’ pay per semester at this place?”

       The driver taps his fingers on the steering wheel and glares down the bus stairs at them. Everyone else is already loaded into their seats; the bus is rocking gently as guys punch each other out or suck each other off or whatever the hell they’re doing in there. Mickey is hovering outside the door, staring down a seating chart like it’s the barrel of a really fucking big gun.

       “The assigned seating,” says Tony, “is because this time, we’re going to keep you in sight of the driver and of me. At all times.”

       Such bullshit. It wasn’t even that big a fire.

       “It was a minor-“

       “It was a major fire, Milkovich, and you fucking know it. We don’t have that many extra buses sitting around, so sit in your assigned fucking seat.”

       Tony thinks he’s untouchable because he lives off-campus. Mickey’ll show him just how wrong that can be.

       He’s still fuming as he slams his ass into his assigned seat, almost jostling Ian Gallagher out of his.

       “Watch it, man,” says Gallagher, adjusting his bag. “It’s a two person bench.”

       Fuck the private school system. Fuck BMOs.

       Tony slides into the seat across the aisle and jabs his thumb and index finger into his own eyeballs, then jerks them towards Mickey’s. Mickey flips him off.

       "Don't say a fucking word," he snaps, not bothering to turn and face Gallagher, and then slouches down in his seat to fume.

       And so Gallagher, of course, decides to start up a conversation before they’re even off grounds.

       “So why, exactly,” he says, “does this fine institution have us going to pick blueberries on the weekends? Sounds fairly middle-class to me.”

       Mickey ignores him, pulls out another cigarette and holds it between his teeth to light it. Tony waits until it catches and then pinches it out with his thumb and forefinger.

       “What the fuck, man.”

       “We talked about fire, Milkovich.”

       Gallagher watches this exchange with a frankly discomfiting amount of interest. “Did you really set a bus on fire last year?”

       How long does Mickey have to ignore him before he stops talking? He sucks half-heartedly on his snuffed-out cig and absently taps at the phone in his pocket.

       Gallagher doesn’t give up. Of course he doesn’t fucking give up. “Hey, man, if we’re gonna have to sit together for the next hour we might as well make nice, right?”

       “Fuck off,” says Mickey.

      “Just tryin’ to make conversation,” says Gallagher.

       Mickey’s had just about enough. “I don’t make conversation,” he says, hissed under his breath, “with fuckheads who slam my dad and fuck my sister. Asshole.”

       Gallagher goes quiet. Mickey angrily unlocks his phone and taps blindly at the screen. No new notifications. His contacts have not changed. He sends out a random Fuck you to Simms just because.

       “I didn’t fuck your sister,” says Gallagher.

       Mickey laughs.

       “No, really,” says Gallagher. “We went to see a movie.” His forehead’s still a little bruised, smudged ugly blue-purple right above the gentle slant of his eyebrows, and Mickey probably needs to stop staring right about now. Simms has texted back a smiley face, that insolent piece of shit.

       “Fuck off," he says absently, "like we don’t all know what that means-“

       “Like, just watched. I didn’t fuck her.” Gallagher’s staring at him, eyes big, lips pursed a little.

       Mickey wets his lips, leans in. “And why’s that?”

       “Why d’you think?”

       “Is the answer under my fucking bed?” They’re leaning almost uncomfortably close together now, words hissed between teeth. This isn’t the sort of conversation that should be called across bus aisles, that’s for goddamned sure. This isn't the kind of conversation that should be being said at all.

       It's electric, is what it is.

       “Yes, that’s it,” says Gallagher. His lips are moist and they stick a little on every exhale. “I like my dildo more than your sister.”

       “You’re fuckin’ pathetic, Gallagher.”

       “You can call me Ian, Mickey.”

       “You can call me Milkovich, Gallagher.”

       “The dildo’s under your bed, huh?” Mickey can feel Gallagher’s breath warm on his mouth. His hand is clutching the armrest right next to Mickey’s forearm. “What, easy access? You gettin’ some good use outta it?”

       Mickey’s entire body flashes hot. “You tryin’ to fuckin’ say that-“

       “Why yes, I am tryin’ to fuckin’ say that you-“

       Tony coughs loudly, and Mickey jerks back, tries to compose himself before turning to glare. His heart, the fucking weak-ass bastard, is hammering double-time against his ribcage. “What the fuck, Tony?”

       “You dropped this,” says Tony, holding out Mickey’s phone.

       Mickey snatches it. Tony doesn’t drop his hand, just keeps his eyes locked on Mickey’s. There’s a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.

       “What the fuck’re you lookin’ at?” Mickey snaps.

       Tony just smiles a little wider.

       Oh, Mickey is taking him the fuck out.

 

       “I have an idea that’s more fun than picking fuckin’ fruit,” says Mickey.

       “What, you mean like literally any idea?” cracks Jerry, and the whole cluster laughs for a solid ten seconds.

       See, this is why it’s a good thing Mickey’s boss. If he weren’t around to actually get stuff done, it’d be all wise cracks and no action. Fuckin’ rich kids’d sacrifice a rep it took three years to build just for a pun or two. No priorities, that’s the thing.

       Mickey waits it out, and then says, “We steal Todd’s nightstick.”

       They quiet down. They can smell blood in the water. “And then do what?” says Umhau.

       Mickey smiles.

       

       Mickey’s a decent pickpocket. The years of being rich have made him soft, though, he’ll admit it; all the practice in the world can’t make up for the determination that sheer desperation will rip out of your very core.

       He’s decent, but it won’t work if there’s no distraction.

       “So be a fucking distraction, dumbasses!”

       “What are we supposed to do?” whines Collins. “Dude’s pretty laid-back except for when it comes to you, how are we supposed to make him mad?”

       “Do something that’s fucking against the rules, Jesus, Collins, it’s not fuckin’ rocket science.”

       “Smoke a joint,” suggests Jerry.

       “Nah, that’s no good,” says Umhau, “Todd’s actually my dealer. Speaking of that, just got a good haul in, anyone want a smoke later?”

       There’s a chorus of agreement.

       “This isn’t helping with the distraction,” points out Mickey.

       “Punch a dude,” suggests Smith.

       Jerry sneers. “What, you’re offering up your sorry face for the punchin'?”

       “No use, he’d just place bets. Next.”

       “Streak.”

       There’s a pause.

       “Actually,” says Mickey, “that idea’s not half fuckin’ bad.”

 

       Umhau loses the hasty punch-out.

       “Damn it,” he says, clutching his stomach.

       Umhau doesn’t have much to whine about, though. He’s actually pretty hung. Not that Mickey’s looking. Okay, everybody’s looking, but not that he’s looking in a way that would make it weird.

       Okay, he’s kind of looking in that way.

       “Toss Jerry your shirt,” says Mickey, “and start running.”

       It’s kind of beautiful. Very loose, floppy. Makes Mickey think of nature documentaries and antelopes running in slow motion through fields of golden wheat and, like. Sea cucumbers swaying in gentle ocean currents.

       “Milkovich,” hisses Collins, “you need to run too.”

       Which is, uh. A valid point.

 

       It’s a nice piece of equipment, folds telescopically, clicks into position with a smooth metal thud as the butt of the thing settles into place. Mickey gives an experimental swing, smashes a cluster of blueberries off a bush.

 

       When Mickey swings his way into the empty bus aisle, Gallagher is already slouched in his seat, feet kicked onto the railing in front of him. He has one hand tapping at the keyboard of his chunk of a crap cell and the other knuckle-deep in his plastic carton of blueberries.

       “Jesus,” says Mickey, “you actually came here to pick fruit.”

       Gallagher looks up, lips parting slightly. There’s purple juice stained in splotches on his full lips, trickling down the corners of his mouth to the soft divot of his chin. “Mickey,” he says, and licks his lips. His tongue is slick and wet and pink-purple with sweetness. “You’re back early. Missed me that bad?”

       “You know me, Gallagher,” drawls Mickey, pulling the nightstick out of the waistband of his pants, “I’m just lost without you.”

       Gallagher’s eyes follow his hand as he yanks up the cushion of the bus seat to stuff the nightstick underneath that. “Is that the guard’s?”

       “Was the guard’s,” Mickey corrects. “‘S mine now.”

       Gallagher places a blueberry on his tongue, bites down slowly. “Does he know that?”

       “What do you think I am, some kinda fuckin’ amateur?”

       Gallagher gets to his feet, stretches. It’s kind of obscene, somehow, with his button-down riding up and his blue-tipped fingers stretching to the ceiling. Could make a guy get the wrong kinda idea. “Whatever, rich kid.” He stares at Mickey, and Mickey stares back, blank, until Gallagher says, “Well, are you gonna move outta the way so I can take a piss or are you gonna stand there and do it for me?”

       Mickey lets the seat fall back down, takes a step into the opposite row. Gallagher’s hand brushes his as he pushes past.

       Mickey has his foot on the first step when he calls back over his shoulder, “The bus restrooms suck dick, you know.”

       Gallagher turns from where he’s almost to the back, hands braced against the seats on either side. “I don’t like to keep reinforcing my rep as white trash,” he says, “but I can tell you without a doubt that this won’t even crack top fifty of the worst places I’ve pissed.”

       Mickey rolls his eyes again and flips him off, mostly as a formality, before clambering the rest of the way off the bus.

       Outside, the sun is microwave warm on his bare arms. The dirt puffs up in little clouds as he sets his feet down, and he hesitates there, one hand braced against the bus, one coming up to shade his eyes. The rows of bushes stretch down the mountain in the distance, and Mickey can just barely make out the dark shapes of his classmates bobbing around in the fourth row, no doubt already halfway to a halfhearted high.

       Mickey takes a deep breath, tastes the sweet damp of the earth. It’s a gorgeous spring day. He’s so fucking young.

       He takes the steps back onto the bus two at a time.

       The bus is quiet, the slap of his sneakers on the aisle jarring over the muffled sound of shouts and bird calls from outside. Mickey gets to the back wall in five big steps and slaps his palm flat against the bathroom door, right beneath the dial spun red to OCCUPIED.

       There’s a pause, and then Gallagher shouts, “It says occupied for a reason, jackass!”

       Mickey bangs on the door again, and again, and then hammers it until the dial snaps to green and Gallagher wrenches the door open a crack, jabbing his flushed face out into the aisle. “Man, can you not- what the hell, Mickey?” as Mickey shoulders past him, getting between him and the door and pulling it shut behind him.

       It’s a tight squeeze in the tiny bathroom; Mickey’s wedged between the sink and the door, and Gallagher’s backed up against the wall, knees spread to knock against either corner. It’s hot in here, cooked warm like an oven in the sun, pressed knee to knee in a tiny plastic bathroom and it smells like Lysol and blueberries and it’s so fucking warm.

       “Mickey,” says Gallagher. His forehead is shiny with sweat, the hollow of his neck damp with it, and his eyes are big in his pale face. “If you’re gonna beat me up anywhere, don’t you think you should choose someplace where you actually have room to swing a-”

       Mickey sinks to his knees.

       “-fist,” says Gallagher, his voice trailing off. “I-”

       He doesn’t have anywhere to go with that, just stands there, pretty mouth fallen open. Watching Mickey Milkovitch unzip his jeans with fingers so eager they’re trembling a little.

       “Mickey?” he says. His voice is, for the first time, unsteady.

       Mickey palms him through his boxers, feels his mouth run wet at the corners when Gallagher twitches against the cotton. Christ, he’s big. Mickey is spiraling. “Hey, Gallagher?”

       "Yes- yeah. Yes."

       "Ya pissed already?"

       “Yes,” says Gallagher, quiet, almost reverent.

       Mickey smiles big up at him. “Then shut the fuck up,” he says, and leans in, can’t slow himself down, can’t keep his mouth from cracking open wider, can’t hide how hungry he is, how much he wants it, how much the first swallow sends relief throbbing white-hot through his aching bones-

       Gallagher says, “Milkovich-”

       Gallagher says, “Mickey-”

       Gallagher says, “Please, please, take it-” fingers prying at the corners of his mouth, one slipping in alongside, tastes sweet, tastes like blueberry, “you’re so fucking-”

       Gallagher says, “Oh, Christ-”

 

       Gallagher thanks him as he comes.

       Jesus fuckin' Christ.

 

       He swallows, neat and easy. Wipes a hand across the back of his mouth and stands up on wobbly knees.

       Gallagher is slumped against the opposite wall, legs flung wide, mouth slapped open. His eyes are wide and unfocused.

       “I,” he says. It takes him a moment to remember how words work. “I- I can, uh-" he sways in, almost helplessly. Mickey's heart drops in his chest, and he gets a palm up to brace against Gallagher's chest before he can move in. He raises the other hand, meets Gallagher's eyes, and flips him the fuck off.

       He fumbles his way out of the bathroom, gets the dial spun, steps into the aisle without looking back. Slams the door shut behind him.

       Outside, the air is cool on his sweaty skin. He takes a moment to breathe before setting off into the rows of blueberry bushes. Somewhere, somebody is holding an unsmoked joint, and Jesus Christ but Mickey has never wanted to less to be sober.

       

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the content warning is a distinct lack of explicit consent for sexual acts.
> 
> thank you so much guys, i hope i'm doing all right. i wrote this as a celebration for being done with a hellish junior year and because i needed some sort of therapeutic action to erase the PAIN of my FAVE abandoning his FAMILY and leaving me ALONE (guess who just finished s3)
> 
> so thanks, i love you

**Author's Note:**

> to be CONTINUED (spoiler: makeouts)
> 
> i've forgotten how to write aus so i hope i'm doing this one alright and if i'm not oh well you win some you fail devastatingly at some


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